Read e-book online Alfred Kazin: A Biography PDF

By Professor Richard M. Cook

ISBN-10: 0300115059

ISBN-13: 9780300115055

Born in 1915 to slightly literate Jewish immigrants within the Brownsville portion of Brooklyn, Alfred Kazin rose from close to poverty to turn into a dominant determine in twentieth-century literary feedback and one in every of America’s final nice males of letters. Biographer Richard M. cook dinner offers a portrait of Kazin in his public roles and in his usually unsatisfied inner most existence. Drawing at the own journals Kazin saved for over 60 years, deepest correspondence, and various conversations with Kazin, he uncovers the entire tale of the lonely, stuttering boy from Jewish Brownsville who turned a pioneering critic and influential cultural commentator. Upon the looks of On local Grounds in 1942, Kazin used to be dubbed “the boy ask yourself of yank criticism.” various guides undefined, together with A Walker within the urban and different memoirs, books of feedback, in addition to a circulation of essays and reports that ceased purely along with his dying in 1998. prepare dinner tells of Kazin’s youth, his marriages, and his kin with such figures as Lionel Trilling, Saul Bellow, Malcolm Cowley, Arthur Schlesinger, Hannah Arendt, and Daniel Bell. He illuminates Kazin’s considering on political-cultural matters and the ordinary method during which his subject’s own existence formed his occupation as a public highbrow. specific recognition is paid to Kazin’s feel of himself as a Jewish-American “loner” whose internal estrangements gave him perception into the divisions on the center of contemporary culture. (20090224)

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Kazin read the papers obsessively, talked to friends, and watched history unfold in the Trans-Lux newsreel theaters in Times Square—where, the times being what they were, there were only newsreel theaters. ’’ He would soon discover, however, that history can move abruptly, violently, in unexpected directions, crushing hopes, unsettling plans, but also offering undreamed-of opportunities for those with the talent and the initiative to seize them. ≥ Politics and Friends Part of the excitement of reviewing for Kazin was encountering various known (or soon-to-be-known) literary and political ﬁgures—Malcolm Cowley, Otis Ferguson, V.

The day was brutally hot, and after the long subway ride through Brooklyn, Kazin and Ferguson climbed to the family third-ﬂoor apartment, now sweltering in the August heat. ’’ His father, slurping his soup and reaching for the meat with his own fork, repeated how much he had always admired the New Republic since the days of Herbert Croly—while Cousin Sophie and Pearl stared at their guest wide-eyed and silent. ∞Ω In time, Kazin encountered Cowley. ‘‘Sail[ing] in after lunch with a tolerant smile on [his] face,’’ Cowley did not make a favorable ﬁrst impression on Kazin, and the ﬁrst impression soon hardened into active dislike.

The day was brutally hot, and after the long subway ride through Brooklyn, Kazin and Ferguson climbed to the family third-ﬂoor apartment, now sweltering in the August heat. ’’ His father, slurping his soup and reaching for the meat with his own fork, repeated how much he had always admired the New Republic since the days of Herbert Croly—while Cousin Sophie and Pearl stared at their guest wide-eyed and silent. ∞Ω In time, Kazin encountered Cowley. ‘‘Sail[ing] in after lunch with a tolerant smile on [his] face,’’ Cowley did not make a favorable ﬁrst impression on Kazin, and the ﬁrst impression soon hardened into active dislike.